REALITY CHECK NEEDED PLEASE!
Heartiest congratulations to MI5 and the Metropolitan Police for foiling that plot to blow up a dozen jet airliners in July, and maybe all those extra precautions regarding carry on baggage are necessary. Better safe than sorry, and all that, but I must say I’m glad I’m not doing a transatlantic flight, or even longer, without anything to read except the airline’s in-flight magazine. And if you can make a bomb out of hair gel and toothpaste, by all mean keep them out of the cabin, as far as I’m concerned. Let people buy fresh supplies when they reach their destination.
But do we have to be so silly about profiling? The people who set off a bomb in the World Trace Centre in 1993 were young Moslem males. The people responsible for 911 were young Moslem males. So were the people who committed the atrocities in Bali, Madrid and London. Surely we can see the common factor here. Yes, it is very unfortunate for all the innocent, non-terrorist Moslems (which is to say almost all of them), but where have intensive security screening, it makes perfect sense to concentrate on those who most resemble those whom we know to have been guilty of past bombings. Maybe not exclusively, but heavily. Of course everyone else needs screening too but is there really any sense at all in treating the eighty-five year old grandmother as though she is just as much the potential terrorist as the young man from Saudi? Knee-jerk correctness may say yes, but logic and common sense say no.
This desperation to treat everyone with uniform suspicion, in order not to offend the easily offended reached new heights very recently. There was the world’s most successful living author, J.K. Rowling, preparing to fly back to England from the USA after some meeting or other. She wanted to take with her on the plane her notebook which apparently contained, among other things, her hand-written notes for the final Harry Potter book. Nope! Not allowed! The over-zealous security screeners at JFK or wherever it was wouldn’t allowed her to taker it on the plane. Never mind her protests that it was irreplaceable, they told her she had to put it in her unlocked checked bags. She was on the point of abandoning her flight and returning to England by sea when they finally relented, on the condition that she bound her notebook securely with several rubber bands. What was all that about? Does anyone in the entire solar system really think that this phenomenally successful author had somehow morphed into an Islamic terrorist? Of course not. So why were they making such a fuss? Was it some misguided belief that if one person is inconvenienced, then everyone must be? Does that really make anyone feel better? In J.K. Rowling the security people had one person whom they could guarantee 100% was not a terrorist. It would have made more sense for them to wave her through unscreened. At least that would have made the queue move just that bit faster, to make the stress of getting onto the plane just that little less for everyone else. The people charged with screening airline passengers have a heavy responsibility. It would be nice if they could discharge it in a sensible, mature fashion. They are people possessed of a certain skill, we hope, not robots.
But do we have to be so silly about profiling? The people who set off a bomb in the World Trace Centre in 1993 were young Moslem males. The people responsible for 911 were young Moslem males. So were the people who committed the atrocities in Bali, Madrid and London. Surely we can see the common factor here. Yes, it is very unfortunate for all the innocent, non-terrorist Moslems (which is to say almost all of them), but where have intensive security screening, it makes perfect sense to concentrate on those who most resemble those whom we know to have been guilty of past bombings. Maybe not exclusively, but heavily. Of course everyone else needs screening too but is there really any sense at all in treating the eighty-five year old grandmother as though she is just as much the potential terrorist as the young man from Saudi? Knee-jerk correctness may say yes, but logic and common sense say no.
This desperation to treat everyone with uniform suspicion, in order not to offend the easily offended reached new heights very recently. There was the world’s most successful living author, J.K. Rowling, preparing to fly back to England from the USA after some meeting or other. She wanted to take with her on the plane her notebook which apparently contained, among other things, her hand-written notes for the final Harry Potter book. Nope! Not allowed! The over-zealous security screeners at JFK or wherever it was wouldn’t allowed her to taker it on the plane. Never mind her protests that it was irreplaceable, they told her she had to put it in her unlocked checked bags. She was on the point of abandoning her flight and returning to England by sea when they finally relented, on the condition that she bound her notebook securely with several rubber bands. What was all that about? Does anyone in the entire solar system really think that this phenomenally successful author had somehow morphed into an Islamic terrorist? Of course not. So why were they making such a fuss? Was it some misguided belief that if one person is inconvenienced, then everyone must be? Does that really make anyone feel better? In J.K. Rowling the security people had one person whom they could guarantee 100% was not a terrorist. It would have made more sense for them to wave her through unscreened. At least that would have made the queue move just that bit faster, to make the stress of getting onto the plane just that little less for everyone else. The people charged with screening airline passengers have a heavy responsibility. It would be nice if they could discharge it in a sensible, mature fashion. They are people possessed of a certain skill, we hope, not robots.
posted by Nicholas | 03:22
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